Air Force PhD Student Compares MSF and Team Rubicon
Doctors without (Virtual) Borders: Internet Effects on Epistemic Communities
Abstract: Epistemic communities existed long before the widespread adoption of Internet technology in the mid-1990s. However, the Internet offers an array of new opportunities for epistemic communities, particularly non-government organizations (NGOs). The purpose of this research design is to propose a method to compare the effects of Internet use between NGOs founded before widespread Internet adoption, or legacy NGOs, and NGOs founded post-adoption, or transformative NGOs. To build my argument, I first present NGOs and the Internet through the framework of constructivism. I contend that not only do epistemic communities reflect constructivist thought, but that Internet can also be viewed as a physical constructivist structure in both design and use. I then propose a qualitative content analysis research design to analyze two NGOs: Médecins Sans Frontières (legacy) and Team Rubicon (transformative). I expect to find differences between each case based on language content, which should indicate how epistemic communities adapt to the Internet. Download Fielder – Doctors without (Virtual) Borders
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